Rafael Pastor

Rafael Pastor is a senior media executive whose career has spanned all aspects of the media industry.

He is the co-founder Sonenshine Pastor & Co., a New York-based investment-banking advisory boutique, and its venture-capital private equity affiliate, SP Capital.

Pastor has been instrumental in advising several major and smaller companies in the media and related sectors on their strategy and transactions involving television, films, publishing, music, advertising, and online businesses. In addition, he has invested in, overseen and raised capital for several of the portfolio companies including RosettaBooks, the premier e-book publisher; PC On Call, a leading outsourced IT-services firm; and Documentary Film Network, a to-be-launched cable and satellite channel. He is chairman of RosettaBooks and Documentary Film Network.

Pastor was born in 1950 in Israel to Hungarian parents and immigrated to the United States in 1959. He received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1972 and went onto complete his law degree from the New York University School of Law in 1975. After graduating from law school, he joined the Wall Street firm of Hawkins, Delafield & Wood, where he principally worked on representing American Broadcasting Companies (ABC) in a wide array of litigation matters. He subsequently became associate general counsel of CBS, where he worked on a range of corporate matters.

In 1989, he became the president of CBS/Fox Video International, one of the largest worldwide distributors and marketers of films. Four years later, he moved on to be an executive vice president of News Corp and Fox International. Pastor was the senior executive at News Corp. (reporting to Rupert Murdoch) covering the non-English-language markets (including Western Europe, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Asia). Pastor's achievements culminated with his development, launch and management of the Fox Latin American Channel, which operated in 18 countries and was News Corp.'s first cable network in the non-English-speaking world.

Pastor also developed, launched and managed USA Network Latin America, USA Network Brazil, SciFi Channel Europe and SciFi Channel South Africa as the president of USA Networks International, a position he held from 1993 until 1997. In 1998, Pastor made the jump to the big screen, becoming president and chief executive of Hoyts Cinemas, one of the largest movie-theater chains in the U.S.

Pastor is a board member and vice president of the International League for Human Rights, a board member of the Jerusalem Foundation and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, and an associate of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He speaks several languages (including French, Hungarian and, less fluently, German and Hebrew), and lives in New York with his wife and two children.


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